A Big O Carol
by Firestar9mm
Summary: This is the brainchild of Grendel226, I just helped a little. *^_^* Sorry it's a little late, that's my fault. So it's a belated Christmas gift--our Big O version of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol". Enjoy!
1. Stave 1: Dorothy's Electric Remnants

~A Big O Carol~  
Bastardized from the original text "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens  
A Grendel226 creation.  
  
~Stave 1: Dorothy's Electric Remnants~  
  
Dorothy was living-impaired to begin with. She had long suffered from the Pinocchio syndrome, and despite the fact that everyone wished she would become a real girl, Dorothy remained living-impaired. And no matter how many children clapped their hands and swore they believed in fairies, and no matter how many people fancied her becoming human, she stubbornly refused to leave her automaton state.  
  
It is quite possibly the fact that Dorothy was living-impaired, along with her dour disposition that prompted Roger Smith to turn her into a practical stove. Her right arm became a convenient flue, and her left balanced the coal scuttle nicely, while the fire burned in her lifeless center. It was quite possibly, Roger felt, the first time the android had ever exhibited a spark of warmth. And it was by this feeble spark that Norman, Roger's only employee scratched away at his ledgers.  
  
They were not really ledgers of course, but damage reports for the latest Megadeus fiasco. Roger's fiscal year was looking ever more bleak since the Big O had lumbered through Paradigm Starbucks. Corporate suits were always the nastiest. Norman worked by the feeble light of Dorothy's glowing innards, and was quite sure the tips of his moustache would break off from the cold when Roger rapped on one of his houglasses.  
  
"I suppose you'll want the day off tomorrow, Norman?"  
  
"Quite, sir. It's one day a year."  
  
"Unprofessional highway robbery! That's what this is! Are you sure you wouldn't rather negotiate?"  
  
"Yes sir."  
  
"Oh. Bother. I see. Well then be here all the earlier the next day. Goodnight Norman, you may go home early."  
  
Norman gratefully closed his ledger and thanked Roger, despite the fact going home early meant he could climb into the house's attic room at a quarter to five rather than half past. Ah, the comforts of a kind supervisor! After Norman's door had closed, Roger began the long and dismal walk up the stairs to his bed-chamber. The walk would have been far less dismal if he had never meddled and dispatched the Electric God at the dam years ago, and Roger was beginning to fancy the idea of turning Dorothy's head into a detachable lantern to increase her efficiency when something caught his eye.  
  
As I have already mentioned, Dorothy was living-impaired, which is precisely what made it so remarkable that Roger saw her standing before him.   
  
"Rooooogeerrrrr!" she moaned pitifully. Wrapped around her were the chains of her sins in life. Well, to be practical it was some 10 base ethernet cable, and a few reels of professional coaxial. "Rogggeerrrrrr!!!" She moaned again this time wailing a bit louder.  
  
"Dorothy? Why are you here?"  
  
"I am here to warn you, Roger Smith, that you must change your ways."  
  
"My ways?"  
  
"Yes. Not only the city council is unhappy with you Roger. As you would call him Roger, the Big Man Upstairs is displeased with your willfull destruction, and so you will be visited by three spirits."  
  
"Big man upstairs? What, Norman?"  
  
To punctuate her point, Dorothy let out a mournful and chilling wail that forced Roger to back into the banister.  
  
"I've committed no willfull destruction!"  
  
"A stove Roger....you turned me into a STOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE!!!!!!!"  
  
That was more than poor Roger could handle, and he promptly fled to his room, dashing through the remnants of Dorothy's electronic particles as he went. After securing the perimeter, locking the balcony doors, checking the closets, and being sure his stash of jelly beans was still under the mattress, Roger allowed himself to drift to sleep. 


	2. Stave Two: The First of the Transcendent...

Stave Two: The First of the Transcendental Troublemakers  
  
Roger Smith might never have seen light, but he knew its absence, and when he woke up the windows were so dark it made his clothing look cheerful in comparison. He frowned. It was impossible to tell what time of day it was...without a piano playing.   
  
He groped for the clock, but Norman, in his haste to leave "early", must have forgotten to wind them one last time. Roger frowned. That's the last time he goes home early, the negotiator thought.  
  
He began to wind the clock himself, with a big enough sigh that one could tell it was an effort.  
  
"What the..." Before his eyes, the clock struck twelve, beating like a heart in his hands, in complete defiance of his efforts to correct it.  
  
"The damn thing's broken," Roger swore, just as the chimes of a nearby clock tower struck twelve. Shocked, Roger threw the bedclothes aside and strode towards the window. Rubbing away the frost with the cuff of his black silk pajamas, the empty clock tower's face smirked back at him through the glass.  
  
No clock! No bells! How could this be?  
  
The thought of the living-impaired Dorothy on the landing returned to him. He returned to bed and puzzled over it, and over it, and over it. No matter how he tried to scrunch away from the questions, he found they had gotten there first and were waiting for him.  
  
The bells continued to strike, the quarter, the half, almost like a lullaby. Roger yawned and closed his eyes...  
  
The noise from the closet made them snap back open.  
  
It was soft and discordant against Roger's rapid breathing. He could have sworn he'd checked the closets...  
  
The fireplace poker suggested itself to him and he took it in hand as he sneaked towards the closet.  
  
"Lame..." a voice intoned from the closet. A thump followed. "Lame..."  
  
Roger cocked an eyebrow in confusion, then flung open the door with a cry of, "Ha!"  
  
A pair of pants whapped him in the face.   
  
"What the-" Roger dropped the poker just in time for a dinner jacket to arrange itself on his head.  
  
A figure was in the closet, its back to him. In contrast to the dark of the closet, it glowed a brilliant, dazzling gold. "Lame..." it repeated, throwing a black tie he had once received for Heaven's Day over its shoulder. It reached for a leather jacket, tilting its golden head and squinting at it. "Well, maybe," it said, turning to face Roger.  
  
After having pronounced in favor of the leather jacket, it looked Roger up and down and snorted.   
  
Roger wanted to know how the man had ended up in his closet, but what he ended up asking was, "Are you the spirit whose coming Dorothy foretold to me?"  
  
A strange lopsided smirk from the spirit. "That I am, my friend." His voice was arrogant and timeless and was akin to having one's teeth drilled.  
  
"Who are you?"  
  
"I'm the Ghost of Christmas Past," the golden spirit said.   
  
"What past?"  
  
"Your past," the spirit answered. "Believe me, I know all about the past. I know as far back as you can remember, even back when...THIS was in style." The spirit dropped a shirt on the floor, wiping his fingers on his jacket as if he'd touched something unclean.  
  
Roger squinted. "Could you maybe stop glowing? It's hurting my eyes."  
  
"You could use a little color," the spirit retorted, stepping out of the closet. "It's your own fault for cloaking yourself in darkness, Crow-Boy."  
  
Roger would have immediately come up with a hot retort, but in his anger the spirit had started to glow even brighter, and the negotiator shrank from it as Superman might from kryptonite.   
  
"Please, what do you want?" Roger finally said, almost pleadingly.  
  
"Relax, I come in peace," the spirit drawled. "What I want is your welfare."  
  
"In that case, you shouldn't have woken me up," Roger muttered, still sore over being called Crow-Boy.  
  
The spirit frowned and suddenly seized Roger's wrist. "All right, I've had enough of you. Let's go."  
  
Roger protested. "It's freezing out there! At least let me put on a bathrobe."  
  
The spirit considered this. "Is it black?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Then forget it." And with that the spirit rose off the floor, dragging Roger with him. Roger barely had time to grab for the bathrobe and his slippers (which had been chewed by a certain kitten...) before they rose to the ceiling.  
  
"Hey--!" Roger sputtered, but it was too late to protest. Roger shut his eyes as they headed for the closed window, certain he would be splatted like a bug on a windshield, but they passed right through the window, and suddenly Roger found they were in the heart of the city.  
  
The golden spirit set them down on the sidewalk, then leaned against the wall and lit a cigarette.   
  
Roger looked around as shoppers hurried beneath the bright Heaven's Day decorations. The lights glowed above like captive stars, though not half as bright as the spirit smoking against the wall.  
  
Roger sighed. "I'm not really dressed for this."  
  
The spirit snorted. "Tell me about it."  
  
Roger was about to deliver a hot retort when his own voice interrupted him.   
  
"Dorothy."  
  
He saw his younger self trudging towards him, Dorothy nearly trotting to keep up. He was mildly surprised at the sight of her without a coal scuttle balanced in her left hand.   
  
"You don't like Heaven's Day?" Dorothy asked past-Roger.  
  
Roger watched as his younger self denounced the meanings of Heaven's Day to the android. The spirit snorted again. "Fashion sense hasn't changed a bit since then. Pathetic!"  
  
They followed the past Dorothy and Roger to the gloomy mansion, where Roger snarled at Dorothy for asking silly questions about the upcoming holiday.  
  
"Will you be giving anyone a present for Heaven's Day?" the android asked.  
  
"I can't take it any more!" Roger snarled to the spirit. "Get me out of here!"  
  
"One shadow more, in a life of shadows," the spirit said.  
  
Even as Roger cried No, they had moved ahead to see her dancing, admiring her new black coat, twirling fast and then faster as the gathers of her dress unfolded, opening her like a flower. The snow fell about her as she spun, like a blessing in the night. She looked almost alive.  
  
It was nearly impossible to reconcile this image with the burning stove in the dark of the mansion.  
  
Roger felt a twinge of guilt. He turned away from the dancing girl, to the soft gentle glow of the guide who had brought him to this lonely place. "Spirit, show me no more. I cannot bear it."  
  
"Sorry, Crow-Boy. I can't change your fashion sense, and you can't change the past!" The spirit pointed a golden finger at him, glowing bright and then brighter. "It is what it is. No money, no power, no darkness can hide the lights of the past!"  
  
"Remove me from this place!" Roger snarled. "Leave me! Go appear on someone's Ouija board. Haunt me no more!"  
  
With an animal howl of rage Roger Smith threw his bathrobe over the spirit, hiding the blinding golden light. Darkness swallowed the pair...  
  
Roger barely had time to register that he was back in the safety of his bedchamber before collapsing amidst the twisted bedclothes, noting how nice and dark the backs of his eyelids were. 


	3. Stave Three: The Second of the Transcend...

Stave 3:  
~The Second of the Transcendental Troublemakers~  
  
It was just past one when Roger was awakened by a strange sound. It sounded a bit like...smacking. Sitting bolt upright in bed he found himself confronted with a most disturbing sight. Sitting in his favorite arm chair was Casey Jenkins...or Angel rather. She was wearing a pink sequined party dress that left very little to the imagination, and was chewing noisily on Roger's jellybeans which she had apparently stollen from under his mattress.  
  
"Hey! My jellybeans!" Roger suddenly felt very, very old. He had spent weeks getting a stomach ache eating bags and bags of jellybeans just to hoarde his favorite: the coveted red cherry ones. Now he'd have to start again.  
  
Startled, Angel looked up and smiled a smile that just kept on going. "Come in man. Come in and know me better."  
  
Roger had the suspicious feeling that she wanted him to come in and know her better in the Biblical sense of the word, so he stayed firmly on his bed. "Are you the second of the spirits that -"  
  
"Please, Mr. Smith, living-impaired. Yes, I am the living-impaired personage of Heaven's Day Present."  
  
"Oh." Roger was at a loss for words, and he couldn't help but thinking that Dorothy would be VERY happy to know that Angel was living-impaired. "Ah..Angel, how did you get to be...er..."  
  
"Oh, transcendental?" She blushed and laughed, tossing her curls in a girlish manner. "Yes, well. Let's just say SOME things weren't meant to be plugged into wall outlets." With that, she rose and shuffled towards Roger. "Shall we go? I have much to show you."  
  
He shied away from her and scowled, "What have I done wrong this Heaven's Day?"   
  
Angel smirked, "Well Mr. Paradigm City Negotiator, you turned your girlfriend into a stove."  
  
"She's not my - "  
  
"And Norman, let's not forget Norman."  
  
"But I let him leave earl -"  
  
"And Roger, I KNOW you didn't make this month's payment to Save the Children. Poor Inga will have to make twice as many sneakers."  
  
"Here now, that's hitting below the belt!"  
  
Angel sighed. "Well come on then let's start with Norman."  
  
Roger was confronted with a scene of just earlier that day. Norman was scratching at his ledgers, when the earlier-that-day Roger plopped a box down on the writing table. "Happy Heaven's Day Norman."  
  
"Master Roger, you shouldn't have." Norman opened the box and turned out a small burnished key in his left hand. "A key sir?"  
  
Roger smiled and puffed up like an angry blue bird. "The key to the *executive* men's room. For all your faithful years of service."  
  
Norman was intensely greatful that Roger had given him a key to the executive men's room as he had previously not had a key to ANY men's room. However, the rosebushes had never looked better. "Master Roger, thank you very much, and a happy Heaven's Day to you as well."  
  
"See? I gave him a present." Roger felt pleased with himself and thought that he had done a rather fine thing.  
  
"It wasn't the key to the men's room Roger. It was the key to the downstairs cabinet. And you KNOW which cabinet I mean."  
  
Roger grimaced and poked his toe hard into his slippers. "It was an honest mistake."  
  
"Roger. That's the cabinet with the Disney movies in it. You really are too cruel."  
  
Roger frowned fiercely. "And if these shadows remain unchanged?"  
  
Angel shook her head sadly. "I see Norman being treated for severe frost-bite in the near future. But your rosebushes just look smashing!"  
  
"Enough!" Roger cried in sheer torment. "Show me no more!" In his anxiety he pushed Angel away and covered his face.  
  
"Hey! My hair! My DRESS! This is designer....DESIIIIIIIIIIIIGNER!!!!!!!!!!!!!" With that the second of the transcendental troublemakers disappeared in a whirl of transcendental dust.   
  
Roger again found himself upstairs in his darkened room, where he crept under the covers to await the last of his visitors. 


	4. Stave Four: The Last of the Transcendent...

Stave Four: The Last of the Transcendental Troublemakers  
  
Roger Smith turned from the window, only to find someone in his bed.  
  
A small, slight figure, feminine form sinking slightly into the mattress as she perched on the edge of his cold, empty bed. He could not see what she looked like, dwarfed as she was by a huge hooded cloak, the color of fresh blood. The hood was drawn over her head, a well of night.   
  
The night had left him weak and humorless, but he attempted a joke anyway. "If there's a woman in my bed I want to be notified," he said softly, smiling weakly.  
  
The figure on the bed did not answer, staring at him from within the red cloak. No light illuminated the cup of dark; he saw not her face.  
  
Instead of being afraid, he felt as though he knew her. "You are the last, are you not?"  
  
A slow nod, as if her head were heavy, as if she were the reaper come to him.   
  
He walked towards her, forgetting his attire, forgetting the cold. She waited with the endless patience of the...living-impaired. He felt he knew the meaning of the words, now.   
  
"Do you have something to show me?" he asked.  
  
Another slow nod.  
  
He reached out his hand. "Then let us go. The dawn presses against the night. You must have much to show me, and we have no time."  
  
She rose gracefully from the bed and extended a black-gloved hand to him from inside the cloak. He took the small hand carefully in his own; her grip was that of iron, of...death. And then they were off.  
  
She was not as talkative as the other two, saying nothing as she leaned against the wall of the dark warehouse she had taken them to. She seemed to be waiting for something.  
  
"All right," a voice called to the men working. "That's enough for today."  
  
"For crying out loud, they could have let us go a little earlier," one worked huffed, turning off the incinerator. "It's Heaven's Day Eve."  
  
"Where do you think they get the metal for all their pretty Heaven's Day decorations?" another worker joked, jerking a thumb in the direction of the now-silent incinerator.   
  
Against the wall there was a flicker of movement.  
  
Roger and the ghost turned to see, him quickly, her leisurely. Roger felt sick.  
  
Propped against the wall were the remains of an old stove-or rather, an android who had become a stove.  
  
"Poor thing, you'll get to live one more Heaven's Day," a worker called to the android, who gave no response. The lights went out, leaving them in total darkness.  
  
"Spirit," Roger said softly. "Are you telling me this is her future?"  
  
He could not see her, and she did not answer.   
  
"Spirit, please. Take me from this place..."  
  
The lights came on, suddenly. He was back in his own room.  
  
The spirit was still there, pointing to the center of the room, where Norman was making the large bed. "Norman," Roger said to the butler. "Is it morning already?"  
  
The butler did not answer, but continued his work.  
  
"Norman, can't you hear me?" Roger asked.   
  
No response. The red-cloaked spirit stood beside the bed, silent.  
  
"Why can't he hear me?" Roger asked her. She beckoned to him, and he followed her out the door.  
  
She seemed to have elected to walk this time; he followed the red cloak through the busy streets. People were wishing each other a merry Heaven's Day. No one seemed to see him, or her; they parted for her like water, noticing her, by not noticing her.  
  
Roger's heart sank when he saw where she was leading him-the cemetery.  
  
He followed her past Timothy Wayneright's tombstone. The man was probably spinning in his grave thinking about what Roger had done to his beloved nightingale. Roger hurried to pass it and move beyond the other forgotten names.  
  
The spirit had stopped her walk on a nearby hill. She pointed to the grave, waiting for him.   
  
He hurried to catch up to her, breath smoking through the chill air like a dragon's as he read the name on the stone.  
  
Roger Smith.  
  
"So this is my future?" he asked the silent ghost.  
  
A nod; then she turned to look down the hill as if waiting for something.  
  
"Oh, God," he said suddenly. "Does it get worse?"  
  
A nod.  
  
A figure trudged up the hill, struggling to carry a garish bouquet of gladiolus and mums. Falling to her knees upon the grave (so that the spirit moved out of the way, her cloak swirling, as if afraid to be touched by her), she began to wail.  
  
"Oh, Roger!" the woman in pink cried, her blonde curls shaking with her tears. "Oh, my beloved husband. It's on Heaven's Day that I miss you the most..."  
  
Roger actually grabbed the spirit by its thin transcendental shoulders. "Spirit, show me no more! Tell me it isn't so!"  
  
The spirit shook its head slowly, no.  
  
"Please!" Roger begged. "I can change! I can change! I'll honor Heaven's Day! I'll buy something navy blue! I'll give Norman the biggest raise in the history of business and take Dorothy to the Heaven's Day ball! Anything so I don't have to spend the rest of my Heaven's Days with Angel!"  
  
The spirit still shook her head.  
  
"Curse you!" Roger cried, shoving her aside. "Are you saying you cannot change it?"  
  
She fell to her knees, the red hood slipping back to reveal...  
  
"Dorothy?!"  
  
"I am saying it is all up to you, Roger Smith," Dorothy replied, tearing the scarlet cloak from her thin shoulders and tossing it in his face.  
  
"I can change!" Roger protested as the cloth swirled around him, impossibly red.  
  
He struggled against it, pawing at the fabric, tearing, until he found the end and realized he was tangled up in his own bedsheets. 


	5. Stave Five: The End of It All

~ Stave Five~  
The End of it All  
  
Roger stared at his room with hazy eyes and blinked at the clock by his night stand which had by now resumed normal time-telling functions. The transcendental troublemakers had gone, and it was now apparently 7 a.m.. Remembering the night's disturbances all too well, Roger rushed to the window and flung it open, calling out to a young boy on the street: "Young man, what day is it today?"  
  
"Why, sir, today's the day they're having the sale at Macy's!"  
  
"What? No, no, no. Is it Heaven's Day?"  
  
"Well of course silly!" The young man smiled coyly up at Roger.  
  
"Tell me, is that bucket of bolts still in the window at the hardware store? The large one," Roger called down.  
  
"Hardware? Mister, do I look like I'd be in a hardware store? I'll go check if you make it worth my while."  
  
Roger grudgingly conceded and procured the bolts from the youth in trade for his favorite Liza Minelli cd, which he bitterly hated to part with. Rushing through the house, he almost collided with Norman who was just coming in from the back garden looking rather pleased with himself.  
  
"Norman I apologize about the key, here's the proper one," he muttered stuffing it into the aged man's hands. Anything to keep from marrying that pink shrew! He then hastily departed and set to work using the large bucket of bolts to refasten Dorothy's appendages in the proper order so that she looked less like a stove and more like a girl again.   
  
Finished at last, in a little less time than it takes for a standard bumbling father to assemble a bicycle, Roger proudly flipped the switch and Dorothy once again sprung to life.  
  
"Ro-ger.....God bless us....every...one."  
  
"Dorothy? Where did that come from?"  
  
"Quite possibly from the week that you rented your 'stove' out to the family of Baptists. You're a louse Roger Smith."  
  
  
Happy Holidays - From Serena and Grendel226  
  
-= We Have Come to Terms =- 


End file.
